MoCap W-SemBreak 24: Setting Up and Animation Layers

Motion Capture has been on the backburner over the break while I've struggled through my animation homework, but I have done good lighting and setting testing and gotten my character fully prepared for adding the effects.

Something I want to look further into is using the gobo filter on a spotlight to cast a water reflection on the walls and floor of my scene. I know that you can create a moving reflection by importing an image sequence into the filter, but I have yet to try it out.

Here are some renders of my first stages of lighting/setting testing:

I think I like the idea of using an enclosed room for the sculpture shots and then breaking them away or having them vanish as the sculpture crashes to the floor.

Unfortunately I forgot to save this file so I'll be recreating the scenes sometime soon. For now it's good to have some reference.

Once my animation formative was handed in, I worked on the animation layers in Motion Builder to correct the little issues like mesh interpenetration and pushing the variation of the movements.

I decided to only stick with my first take called 'Full 1' to save time. I created an animation layer for the hands, adjusting the positions of each finger. I didn't go to the same extreme lengths as I had done with this last year because my character won't be interacting with any props so it was unneccesary.

Here's an example of mesh interpentration on the left hand:

And here's how it looks when fixed (on the right hand):

I had to be careful when she bends too as the arms shouldn't touch, nor the hands and body.

Additionally, I used a separate animation layer for the head positioning and then another one that I called 'up downs' to adjust the waist control higher or lower, therefore giving the movement more variation and pushing the dance to make it more visually interesting.

My character was ready for importing back into maya where I decided to attach the heart 'egg yolk'. I found a free license low poly heart model made by I0r3l3i on Sketchfab.com

Lowpoly Human Heart - Download Free 3D model by l0r3l3i. (2023, December 19). Sketchfab.com. https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/lowpoly-human-heart-69d53ff1e0714f11b416eacc9263959b

Then I resized and parented the heart to the rig by constraining it to the second spine joint.

It looks really egg like when I apply the aistandardsurface preset 'honey' and the body mesh with the preset 'clear water'.

Finally I found this free stone marble texture to apply to my body mesh for the sculpture scenes.

kues1. (n.d.). Stone floor texture [Photo Stone floor texture]. Retrieved April 28, 2024, from https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/stone-floor-texture_1129860.htm

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